I was forty-five when I decided to be a priest finally. Committing to a religious life, I hesitated still. How would my sexual and spiritual life play out? It reminded me of what Gerard Manley Hopkins had said about Walt Whitman: “I may as well say what I should not otherwise have said, that I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman’s mind to be more like my own than any other man’s living. As he is a great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession. And this makes me the more desirous to read him and the more determined I will not.” Was I a scoundrel? Rubbing up against a religious vocation it felt more likely. Someone might take issue with who I was. Could I be out and in?
Diary: Spencer Reece, Reading Hopkins
Diary: Spencer Reece, Reading Hopkins
Diary: Spencer Reece, Reading Hopkins
I was forty-five when I decided to be a priest finally. Committing to a religious life, I hesitated still. How would my sexual and spiritual life play out? It reminded me of what Gerard Manley Hopkins had said about Walt Whitman: “I may as well say what I should not otherwise have said, that I always knew in my heart Walt Whitman’s mind to be more like my own than any other man’s living. As he is a great scoundrel this is not a pleasant confession. And this makes me the more desirous to read him and the more determined I will not.” Was I a scoundrel? Rubbing up against a religious vocation it felt more likely. Someone might take issue with who I was. Could I be out and in?